'Romeo and Juliet' at the Royal Opera House

Last week I went to see 'Romeo and Juliet' at the Royal Opera House, the ballet that made me fall in love with the art form and, luckily, the dancer who played Romeo in that production six years ago was dancing again. Steven McRae danced Romeo in 2015 and I was in the audience when he snapped an Achilles tendon in 2019 so I had to be there to see his triumphant return to the stage last week, once again dancing Romeo, with Sarah Lamb as Juliet. What a privilege to see this joyous ballet with such great and graceful dancers as my re-introduction to the main stage of the Royal Opera House. The Royal Ballet dance Kenneth MacMillan's version of this eternal story - I've also seen John Cranko's version in Boston and, more recently, Matthew Bourne's re-imagining of the tale, but I prefer the Royal Ballet. Prokofiev was having a good month when he wrote the score for this ballet. 

We all know the story behind the work, the rivalry between the two houses of Capulet and Montague in Verona, how Romeo falls for Juliet and pursues her to marry secretly while she is supposed to marry another nobleman. She feigns suicide to avoid the marriage but Romeo believes she is dead so commits suicide himself and when she finds him dead she follows him into death. Whenever we get to the marriage scene I can't help but wish they don't marry since marriage signs their death warrants, but they always do. Maybe one day the friar will refuse to marry them...

Needless to say, I loved it. It was great to see the excitement of the sword-fencing scenes again, see the Happy Strumpets strut their stuff and see Romeo and his mates enjoying themselves before tragedy strikes. There were a few tense moments when Steven McRae took off to fly across the stage but he was on top form and seemed to revel in performing again. It's what he does, after all. He received huge cheers when he strode on stage at the start of the performance and an even louder ovation at the end, with Sarah Lamb pushing him forward for bows at the end and to accept the cheers and love from the audience. The bows at the end are usually led by the ballerina but that night it was all for Steven, and rightly so. 

And I still love that ballet.

'Poussin and the Dance' at the National Gallery

There's a small exhibition at the National Gallery at the moment about Poussin's dance paintings in the ground floor galleries. I'm not a huge fan of Poussin or that 'French academic' style he inspired but he is a great painter. He left France for Rome in the 1620s and that is where he studied the antiquities there, the statues and other objects, seeing how the artists of the past portrayed movement in stone and that's what he tried to reproduce in these paintings. 

The exhibition probably contains more sketches and drawings than it does paintings, but that's bonus for me. I love seeing great painter's drawings and preliminary sketches, see how they played around with positioning characters in the scenes of the paintings and how they might've changed their minds. I find it all rather fascinating. Poussin seems to have preferred ink for his drawings which gives nice lines and makes them longer lasting. I think my favourite was a study for 'Dance to the Music of Time', a detail from the painting which is the poster for the exhibition.

I admit to not paying much attention to most of the paintings on show - that's pretty, that's colourful - but three paintings that did grab my attention were all painted for Cardinal Richelieu and they were hung together, the 'Triumph of...' Pan, Silenus and Bacchus. Each of them are rather raucous scenes of drunken debauchery as you'd expect from the protagonists. There's a lot going on in these paintings and they're full of movement with lots of dancing, leering, drunken collapses, people loosing their clothes, they're joyous celebrations of life. Look at the detail in the paintings and decide what's happening, like in the 'Triumph of Pan' one man is trying to pull a satyr to his feet after he's drunkenly collapsed - who would put that at the front of a painting? Poussin, obviously.

Apparently, the urn just in front of the pair is a copy of an actual urn that was recently found and was creating a stir in academic circles at the time.

The final painting of the show is 'Dance to the Music of Time' on loan from the Wallace Collection for the first time, and it gets a room to itself. It's a very allegorical painting and is, oddly, quite relaxing. It shows Time playing his lyre and Poverty, Labour, Wealth and Pleasure holding hands and dancing together. Unlike the other paintings, there isn't a crowd around them, just them in a pastoral landscape. Above them in the clouds, we see Apollo and Dawn crossing the sky.

The exhibition was quite busy when I was there so I'll go back again in a few weeks time when it should be calmer. I'd like the opportunity to see the three 'Triumph' paintings again to focus on the detail. 

'L'Heure Exquise' at the Royal Opera House

'L'Heure Exquise' is a work by Maurice Bejart based on Samuel Beckett's 'Happy Days'. In the play, the lead character is buried up to the waist in rubble so in this dance version, she is buried in pointe shoes. The lead was played by the ever-graceful Alessandra Ferri partnered by Carsten Jung. Ferri has a long relationship with the Royal Ballet, training at the Royal Ballet School and joining the company in 1980, achieving the rank of Principal dancer and later becoming Prima Ballerina Assoluta. And she's still dancing. 

The performance was in the Linbury Theatre, much smaller and more intimate than the main stage, and it's great to be so much closer to the dancers. Ferri tells her stories of her past through words, song and, of course, dance. It starts with her buried to her waist in ballet shoes and then the mound of shoes opens up and she steps onto the stage to sift through her memories. One minute she's singing then the next she's riding Jung like a childhood rocking horse. He was a very able partner, morphing into whatever Ferri needed.

The most tense and puzzling section for me was when Ferri discovers a handbag full of memories - a compact, a pair of ballet shoes - that she takes out one by one, and then she pulls out a gun and holds it up in the air. What is that for? Why is it there? What happened in her past to make a handgun such an important memory? Especially when she points it at Jung and he slowly takes it from her. Clearly an important memory and, like the rest of the show, a puzzlement...

For most of the show I had no idea what was going on - just like when I saw the 'Happy Days' play a few years back - so I just let it wash over me. You don't always have to understand everything, sometimes just experiencing it is enough. It's always a delight to see Alessandra Ferri and admire her skill and art and I look forward to the next time.

'Mark Rothko 1968: Clearing Away' at Pace Gallery

A new gallery has recently opened in London and it's opening exhibition is by Mark Rothko, a small series of paintings in acrylic on paper. I've seen a few Rothko paintings over the years at various exhibitions and galleries, including the Tate collection, and they've always been big things but these were pleasantly small and would fit in anyone's living room. That was quite a surprise and joy - I could have one of these in my home.

There's something about Rothko's paintings that I can't quite put a finger on that attract me. I'm sure I read somewhere that they're quite meditative but that's someone else's view and not mine, but they are quite peaceful, quite restful to gaze at. Is it the colour palette, the shape, the size? I don't know, I'm still making up my mind, but I like them. 

There are 22 paintings on display and I probably spent a ridiculous amount of time examining the brush strokes and the colours - is the yellow in tis painting the same as the yellow in that painting on the opposite wall? Is this orange the same or is it slightly more pink? If the curators had spent more time thinking about people like me rather than the overall shape of the exhibition they would've hung some of the paintings side by side so I could examine them properly. Still, can't have it all I suppose.

It may be small but it's perfectly formed. I really enjoyed it and I'm pleased I've seen these rarely exhibited works. It's only on for another couple of weeks so, if you're in the West End, it's well worth visiting - book a slot through the Pace website and see some paintings you'll probably never have the opportunity to see again.

Matthew Bourne's 'The Midnight Bell' at Sadler's Wells

After over a year and a half I ventured back to a theatre to see Matthew Bourne's new dance work, 'The Midnight Bell' at Sadler's Wells. I've not read any of the Patrick Hamilton books this work is based around so I had no idea what to expect but a New Adventures production is always worth a look.

It's a glimpse into the lives of some of the denizens of Soho who frequent the pub, The Midnight Bell. The barmaid loves the barman but he's in love with the local prostitute, their regulars include the spinster and the gigolo, the rich bitch who plays with the madman but isn't really interested in him at all and then we have the gay lovers who happen upon one another in the pub one night. They dance their stories, tales of romance and sex, their hopes and dreams, of cheap hotels and sex in the park, all set in the years between the wars when the world was different but also the same. One of the gay lovers turns out to be a policeman but is this entrapment or something more? You'll have to see it to find the answer to that one.

The characters all seem to have sad little lives, slowly drinking their lives away while their passions boil under the surface but one character does seem to have a happier life. He is the sailor barman who opens the show singing (miming to an old song) of love and we follow his story along with the others and, in the end, he moves on, heading back to sea and more adventures. The rest are still there, drinking in the pub while he escapes. A brief moment of hope amid the smoke-clogged and beer-fumed atmosphere of the pub. 

I think that's what I really liked about this production, all the stories going on at the same time, sometimes literally at the same time in different parts of the stage. Life is a bit grim and dreary in the gloom of a London night with odd street signs providing the light and, of course, we know they've been through one war and are about to head into another one, all a bit sleazy and down at heel but there are moments of hope. Like when the spinster strips the gigolo to his underwear, ties him up and leaves him in the cheap hotel room - she's seen him for what he is at last. And when the sailor heads back to sea with a smile on his face, looking forward to new adventures.

I particularly enjoyed Michela Meazza dancing Miss Roach, the spinster, who I've seen before as the Queen in 'Swan Lake', and Netta Longdon as the rich bitch who ends up... or does she? George Harvey Bone was great as the madman and I really liked Liam Mower as the West End chorus boy. I also really liked Paris Fitzpatrick as the barman who bookends the show as he goes back to sea looking for hope and love. 

I'm very pleased that it was this production that got me back into a theatre after all this pandemic time and, for that, it'll have a special place in my theatrical memories. Thank you Sir Matthew!

'Fragmented Illuminations' at the V&A

There's a delightful small exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum called 'Fragmented Illuminations: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Cutting at the V&A'. The museum has quite a collection of manuscript cuttings which was a bit of a fad for the Victorians, cutting out pretty pictures and framing them or finding other uses for them. The exhibition is only in two rooms, the first looking at the cuttings in the 19th Century and the second exploring the cuttings in their original context.

The first room goes under the title of 'Copyists, Restorers and Forgers' and considers some of the educational uses of the cuttings, such as copies of 15th Century illuminated capital letters published by the Arundel Society (for the promotion of knowledge of art). Much as I liked that room, the next room was better, with medieval and renaissance works on display and this gives a wider view of illuminated manuscripts.

The exhibits were wide ranging from religious works and psalm books to books of hours and legal text books. If there was a book then it deserved to be illuminated in some way, not just religious books. Books were made by hand before printing so all things were possible. It's a small exhibition but well worth seeing if you're going to the V&A. 

Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate Modern

Sophie Taeuber-Arp isn't as well known an artist as she should be and Tate Modern has put on the first ever retrospective of her work in Britain and it is a joyous celebration of her life and work. Born in Switzerland in 1889, she was educated and went to art school in Munich, met her husband Hans Arp (also an artist), became part of the dada movement, exhibited with Kandinsky and Sonia Delaunay and sadly died in Switzerland in 1943. I hadn't heard of her before this exhibition but she is now firmly on my radar.

Something I immediately noticed was that her works were relatively small in size and were created for the 'average' home. They weren't created as big public works that could be bought by the rich or public institutions, these are works for me and you. They are also very colourful and largely abstract. Apparently Taeuber-Arp came to abstraction through dissecting textiles and many, at least the early works, are quite linear in composition. She also used a wide range of materials in her work, using graphite, crayons, gouache, watercolour, oils and other media like wool to make 'appliqué paintings'. 

As you'd expect from a dadaist she was involved in lots of different things within the movement and turned her hand to most things. She created puppets for the Swiss Marionette Theatre and a series of 'dada heads' like hat stands and she turned the wood herself. One of the 'heads' is a portrait of her husband. I loved the puppets and it would be fun to see them in action (I think there's a video in the exhibition but I missed it). 

As well as being an artist Taeuber-Arp was also an architect and designer and some of her furniture is on display, all modular and functional and could easily be in a furniture shop today. There's also a gorgeous rug hung on the wall that she designed and made and it looked very deep and rich. She used her rugs and tapestries as the basis for creating other designs and there's a cabinet full of her experimental watercolour designs based on the rug. I like the idea of riffing on a design, developing it for a different work. 

As I walked through the exhibition I noticed that the colour palette became deeper and richer before becoming very sparse as I came to her later works. The works became more angular and geometrical as she delved deeper into her own abstraction. Some of the later works were simple line drawings in graphite and/or ink from during the Second World War when she didn't have access to a studio or lots of materials. There's also a gorgeous landscape drawn entirely in graphite that shows what a great draughtswoman she was. 

Sadly, Sophie died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty stove as she sheltered from the war in Switzerland in 1943 at the age of 53. It's very sad that we don't have her more mature works - who knows what she might have created after the war? Her friend Sonia Delaunay 'discovered' black in her 60s - what would Sophie have discovered?

Sophie lived and created in one of the most artistically stimulating times - the first half of the 20th Century. Der Blaue Reiter were working in Munich when she was there and dada sprung into life when she was ready to create, just as with Sonia Delaunay. There's a lovely photo of Sophie and Sonia in beachwear that Sonia designed at the opening of the exhibition. Sophie exhibited over the years with Sonia and with Vassily Kandinsky so that's pretty good company to be in. She discovered her own form of abstraction and pursued it for the rest of her life. I assume she isn't more well-known partly because she died during the war so wasn't there to celebrate the peace and create more great works. I wonder how she would have responded to the Abstract Expressionists and their huge canvases.  

This really is a very good exhibition that provides a good selection of her works across her lifetime. When I was there it was busy with a steady stream of people but not crowded, and I liked that since I could linger over the details of paintings without feeling I was hogging them. It seems to have been an unexpected success since Tate has run out of catalogues and is having to get more reprinted despite it being open for another couple of months. I'll definitely go back to see it again after the school holidays to spend more time with this wonderful artist. I need to learn more.

Yayoi Kusama's 'Infinity Mirror Rooms' at Tate Modern

Tate Modern currently hosts two of Kusama's 'Infinity Mirror Rooms'. The tickets for this exhibition were snapped up very quickly and it is currently sold out until October although more tickets will be released later in the summer for the remainder of its run until June 2022. If you can, grab tickets since it's well worth a visit.

I'm a late-comer to the joys of Kusama, only finding her in 2018 at at exhibition at Victoria Miro in Islington with her installations and artworks and, of course, an infinity room. I was stunned. So much colour and life, giant colourful shapes, pumpkins and flowers, large paintings, indoors and outside and a stunning infinity room in total darkness other than the lit up shapes hanging in infinite space. I loved it. I loved it so much that I sat in a queue to buy tickets to Tate Modern for over an hour when they went on sale - since when do you have to queue for tickets to an art exhibition? 

The first room of the exhibition includes some text and photos of Kusama along with a 'viewer' with coloured windows to look through into infinity that you can't really get close enough to see properly. The next room includes more photographs, a film on rotation and the two infinity rooms. The first is 'Chandeliers of Grief', a dark room with one source of light - the chandelier hung in the centre of the room surrounded by mirrors so it's reflected for miles in all directions. It took a few seconds to adjust to the disorientating effect within the room but I soon got the lay-out and became more adventurous. I made the mistake at looking down underneath the chandelier to see the depths stretching on forever, down down down forever, a drop without a bottom to squash into. Scary! 

The entrance to the next room, 'Filled with the Brilliance of Life', is just a few yards away and siren-called me to visit, so I did. Brilliance indeed. The room is dark but includes approximately 4, 597,348 tiny lights (I gave up counting at that point) suspended from the ceiling and all reflected in the mirrors and the little stream either side of the walkway to create an infinite universe of colour (don't mis-step or you'll get a wet foot). I think I was grinning madly the entire time I was in that room. 

The room itself isn't very big but the lights go on forever in infinite space. The colours keep changing every few seconds, morphing from one display into the next, showing a new vista and new possibilities. 

I loved that room so much that after I exited I immediately walked round the outside back to the entrance to go in a second time, on my own for a while and it was magical.

Entrance to the exhibition is timed and you're given a couple of minutes in the room in groups of two or three - the rooms are quite small so there's not much space and the numbers are kept small for both safety reasons and for enjoyment. If you want some joy in your life book tickets to this exhibition as soon as they become available, you won't be disappointed.

'Forest for Change' at Somerset House

The new installation in the courtyard of Somerset House is 'Forest for Change' by Es Devlin and it really is a small forest. It's odd to see the usually pristine and bare courtyard now filled with various trees. Other than the annual Christmas Tree, I wonder when the last time was that a tree actually stood where Somerset House now is? It's there to celebrate the London Design Biennale and highlights the United Nations' Global Goals and I suspect it'll do a great job of bringing in the curious to get some education about the Goals and what they mean to us. It worked with me.

The forest is all that big really - it's in a courtyard after all - but there are plenty of little trails amongst the trees so you can inspect the trees, shrubs and individual plants as you wander. Woodchip covers the ground to give it more of a feel for the forest and eases walking on the cobblestones. The trees aren't terribly old or tall so, wherever you look, are the buildings of Somerset House poking out above the trees. You can't miss it. Entry to the Biennale is by ticket but visiting the forest is free of charge whenever you're in the area.

Keep walking through the forest and you come to a clearing with a circle of metal 'monoliths', one for each of the UN Global Goals. They're in different colours and partially mirrored and seemed to be very popular with visitors while I was there. 

The first Goal is 'No Poverty' and the side of the 'monolith' includes a quote from Nelson Mandela: "Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the action of human beings.". 

I really liked it and it does an excellent job of attracting visitors - a forest at Somerset House? - and drawing attention to the Global Goals. Take time to look around the 'monoliths' and see which quotes have been picked to highlight each one. Plus, it's free to enjoy so why not?

'Sensing The Unseen' - Gossaert at the National Gallery

Jan Gossaert's 'Adoration of the Kings' is the subject of a Room 1 exhibition at the National Gallery at the moment. The exhibition was being set up on my last visit to the Gallery in December 2020 before we went into lockdown again so I made a point of seeing it now that the Gallery is open again and I'm so pleased I did. Gossaert's 'Adoration' is a favourite painting of mine and it's always astonishing to see how much detail Gossaert managed to cram into a single painting. I've seen it often so it's a joy to explore it in a new way.

Room 1 exhibitions focus on a single painting or a narrow theme to look in detail at something. Room 1 is, as you'd expect, the first room you come to in the gallery off the (former) main entrance and foyer except that the main entrance has now moved to the Sainsbury Wing so, all too often, it's one of the last rooms you're likely to visit, especially in these pandemic days. Exhibitions are generally on for a short time, only for a few months, so we're lucky that the Gallery decided to extend the Gossaert exhibition after lockdown.

The exhibition is a sort of 'sound and vision' immersive experience  focusing exclusively on the one painting. There is timed entry and you walk into Room 1 and take your place in one of the three 'pods', standing in a circle on the floor in front of a large screen showing an enlarged detail of the Virgin with glints in her hair. You hear the sound of the wind, dogs barking and the chatter of the crowds around you as the camera moves slowly around the painting showing enlarged detail after detail. I've seen this painting many times but who knew that the dog in the centre actually has eyelashes? I suspect this is what the title of the exhibition refers to, the amazing details in the painting that we haven't seen but we know there is more to it.

It was the amazing details of the painting on the screen in front of me that astonished me. The sound element enhanced the experience but I was blown away by what I was seeing. This is such a great idea for an exhibition and I hope the Gallery tries it again with other paintings.

The incredibly detailed photography panned around the painting taking in details of the rich clothes and faces, details of the background and the offerings to the new king from the three kings. The film focuses in on where Gossaert signed the painting around the black king Balthasar's hat (under his crown) that I'd never noticed before since it's actually so small. This exhibition really is an advert for looking at the details in paintings. You never know what you might find.

In a way, this exhibition is giving us the view of the painting that curators and restorers have with the incredible detail. I'll never get close enough to the painting to see the highlights in the Virgin's hair or the embroidery details in Balthasar's hat or his rich robes but I now know it's there.

The camera climbs slowly to the top of the painting and the final few close ups are of the angels flying above the scene and then up towards the star that the kings and shepherds have followed, getting closer and closer and we look into the heart of the star. Such detailed work that is impossible top see when you look at the painting when hung on the Gallery's wall, almost breathtaking

You're then invited to step outside the pod to view the painting hung on the wall and listen to the voice of Balthasar as Theresa Lola reads her poem about Balthasar's journey as he hears people call out to him, comment on him, the strangeness he feels being in the presence of so many different people. And then the light dims and the door is open and it's time to leave. It was an astonishing experience and I felt privileged to be able to see it.

Sadly there's no exhibition book or even postcards so I'm pleased I took my own photos of what I saw on the screen. I want to see it again.

The painting was created between 1510-15 in oil on a wooden panel and is about 5'9"x5'3".